Jack the Insider: jail those who cover up sex abuse

AUSTRALIA
The Australian

August 3, 2017

JACK THE INSIDER
ColumnistCanberra
@JacktheInsider

From hippy spiritual groups to the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, the Salvation Army, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Uniting Church, Yeshiva schools in Melbourne and Sydney, Scouts Australia, disability service providers, the Australian Defence Force, the YMCA, hospitals, orphanages, sporting and artistic organisations, government and non-government schools have all been in the gun over the last four years.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse established in 2013 has ceased its public hearings. Its final report will be presented to the federal government in December.

We have lost a great deal of focus as events have unfolded. The media reporting has caused many of the problems, rattling the skeletons of an old unloved and unlovable sectarian Australia and obsessed with gotcha moments as if victims’ pain can only find some expression when a big name comes to grief in a public hearing.

In the wake of the Commission’s investigations, offenders certainly should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and those who have covered up, moving the offenders on to new groups of unsuspecting children, should be publicly shamed.

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